


i'm always in this twilight (in the shadow of your heart)

by diasterisms



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, how to drag your emo boyfriend's garbage ass back to his mother, pining... so much pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 19:19:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9137761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/pseuds/diasterisms
Summary: Coded on a secondhand datapad in a run-down motel room in Mos Eisley, deleted and never sent:Everything about us was a whirlwind.Written on a scrap of durasheet in a Tion Cluster outpost, the words fading after a while into air and ghosts:You shouldn't have forgiven me for any of it.Scraped into the bark of an oak tree on the Argazdan homeworld:You won't believe the dreams I have about you.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jitterygummy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jitterygummy/gifts).



> Ring in the Reylo pinch hit for jitterygummy, whose prompt was: "After the First Order is defeated, Kylo goes into self-inflicted exile. Rey decides to go after him." Due to the short amount of time, I was unable to develop this idea as much as I would have liked but I hope it still reads okay. Happy New Year to jitterygummy and everyone else who might be reading this! Comments would be very much appreciated!
> 
> (Full disclosure: in order to make deadline, the last part was written on the stationery of the hotel where my friends and I sobered up after the countdown. The things I do for this ship.)

i.

 

There are many messages scattered throughout the galaxy if one only knows where to look. No one ever does— in fact, no one knows there are messages to look for in the first place because the origin point moves around and keeps his secrets. There are signals blinking from the towers of abandoned space stations, broadcasted only to barren worlds. There are frantic Aurebesh sentences scratched into the surfaces of corner tables in various cantinas from Wistril to Vorzyd to Munto Codru. There are stray snatches of long-forgotten Rebel code lost in the stream of communiques racing back and forth across the HoloNet, transmitted from stolen ships that are then quietly traded in on the black market in case anyone attempts to trace the sender. There are sand-etched words swallowed by the waves and words carved into tree trunks and written on fogged-up viewports and screamed in dreams. There are audio recordings, notes on paper, prayers in the darkness of ancient temples, and half-mad ramblings sunk to the bottom of the glass.

 

These messages vary in tone according to the sender's mood when he writes them. Sometimes they're angry, full of bitter accusations and lists of everything that went wrong, _why were you so scared, what we could have become, why didn't you give me something to fight for, maybe for you it was different and I was just the only one around._ Sometimes they're obscene, brimming with all the frenzy and hubris of a starving man at wit's end, _I wonder if you think of me at night when your fingers are buried deep inside you and if you still look like you've found Typhojem or R'iia or the Mandalore Reborn when you come._ Sometimes they're pleas for forgiveness or for second chances, _I'm sorry, find me, I'll make it good this time, I'll be better like you deserve._ Sometimes they're all of them.

 

Each message is a love letter in its own way, addressed to the same person over and over again. _Rey._ He burns her name across the stars, embeds it in folds of static, whispers it to desolate coasts and old forests and cities silenced by night. _Rey, Rey, Rey._

 

ii.

 

She was twenty years old when he defected to the Resistance and twenty-one when they shared their first kiss. The time between those two momentuous events in Kylo Ren's life was a blur of bickering and grudgingly saving each other's lives in battle and sparring sessions that made every Force-sensitive within a ten-mile radius wince. There were soft moments, too— his cloak draped over her shivering shoulders on ice worlds, the way her fingers trailed down his scar the night he was badly wounded and everyone thought he was going to die, quiet conversations against the beat of the _Falcon'_ s sensors during voyages that stretched on for hours. The day they kissed, they had long since arrived at something approaching friendship, albeit without the cessation of hostilities that such a dynamic would normally entail.

 

It happened on Thule, a former Sith stronghold in the Esstran sector. The sunset was the color of blood on those arid savannas, lit by a lightning storm brewing to the east. As the planet had largely been forgotten after the Clone Wars, they made it to the temple on the rocky outcrop without incident, although Kylo paused to look up at the pearly crescent in the fiery sky, the moon where his grandfather had once led an assault to disable the Separatist shield generator that was projecting a barrier over Thule. He felt Rey peek at his end of the bond, the sensation akin to a passing glance levelled through a crack in the doorway, and he surrendered his thoughts easily enough. There was a certain comfort in someone being able to understand him without the need for clumsy, insufficient words.

 

"I studied everything he ever did," Kylo mused. "I trawled through extant Old Republic archives, retraced his steps from Tatooine to Mortis to Mustafar, met with those in the Imperial old guard who had known him personally. Even as a child, I clung to what little information my parents and Luke Skywalker would divulge. I found in him a kindred spirit— someone whose gifts ran contrary to the Light, someone who sought to cast off his chains."

 

"Someone who would derail an important mission because he wanted to do a bit of moon gazing first?" There was no real bite to Rey's tone; or, if there was, it was soon belied by the gentle tug of her hand at his elbow. _Let's go, Ben._

 

He let her pull him through the cavernous entrance while in the sky above them and decades before them, on the craters of Sivvi, Anakin Skywalker fought on, young and brash and full of fear.

 

*

 

The interior of the temple was a labyrinth of booby traps— spike pits cunningly interspersed between dusty stretches of level flooring, trick staircases, and pressure plates that made razor-sharp blades swing down from the rafters. There were also dead ends and paths that looped back in on themselves and hallways that branched off in several different directions. It was enough to try even a scavenger's patience and so, by the time Kylo and Rey reached the innermost sanctum, they were snarling at each other like a pair of juvenile bloodwolves.

 

"If we took that right turn as I suggested, we would have gotten here an hour ago," Kylo groused.

 

"That hallway was lined with crypts, which meant we'd have woken the temple guardians the minute we stepped inside," Rey pointed out. "I'd rather not fight my way through an army of Sith undead for the _third_ time this year, thanks."

 

"We could have destroyed them all and sat down for a nourishing meal afterwards and we would _still_ have gotten here sooner."

 

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were asking me out to lunch."

 

"Interesting that that's where your mind went."

 

She glared at him, a light blush creeping onto her cheeks. He smirked, although secretly grateful that his hair was long enough to hide the tips of his ears that were turning red at his own innuendo. The bond was a string stretched taut between them, tense with the fragile weight of something that was almost there but not quite, something from which there was no return and so could not be put into words.

 

In tacit agreement they shifted their attention to the statue in the middle of the sanctum. Nearly twice Kylo's height, it was a depiction of Marka Ragnos, who had been Lord during the Sith Empire's golden age, complete with the distinctive horned crown, the scaled gauntlets, and the scepter he held over his breastbone. It differed from other likenesses of him that Kylo had seen due to the two lightsaber crystals set into his stone face as eyes, one bronze, the other cyan.

 

Rey fished what looked like a small silver file out of her pocket, approaching the statue with the determined tilt to her chin that Kylo had grown to both fear and admire. "Wait," he called after her, and it must have been the urgency of his tone that stopped her in her tracks. Would that she were as biddable the rest of the time.

 

He extended the Force towards the floor around Ragnos' statue, telekinetically prodding at the tiles. None gave way to spike traps or pistons of fire and it struck him as odd that the ancient Sith would have rigged nearly every chamber with pressure plates save for the one containing their most prized relics.

 

"Maybe they didn't think anyone would get this far," Rey suggested. They were trying to break the habit of blurting out responses to each other's thoughts, as everybody else found it off-putting, but here and now it was just the two of them. "In any case, we can't stand around forever. Come give me a boost."

 

Kylo did not smile. But he also lacked the foresight to clamp down on the amusement that flickered through their link, which meant that he was soon on the receiving end of another one of her glares. "For Your Worshipness' information," she said frostily, "the statue is three meters tall. _You_ won't be able to reach the crystals, either. Now hurry up and get over here."

 

"And _I'm_ 'Your Worshipness'?" he muttered under his breath.

 

*

 

Soon he had her hoisted on his shoulders, his gloved hands wrapped around her slim calves as she set about to prying the bronze crystal loose from Marka Ragnos' eye socket. These were not the circumstances under which he'd imagined sticking his head between her thighs— for starters, he was facing the wrong way—

 

She faltered above him, the heel of her boot jerking against his chest. The thing about the bond was that they could keep no secrets from each other; he had his fantasies and she had hers, and more often than not they ran along the same lines. There were walls, yes, but these were lowered during missions— and by the time they had learned how to cast them it was already too late, it was already mutual knowledge that they thought of each other in _that_ way. They had never discussed it, though. Things were complicated enough without adding the peculiarities of _biological imperatives_ to the pile.

 

After a bit of fumbling, Rey dropped the bronze crystal into Kylo's upturned palm. It hummed with power rawer and more elemental than that of a normal lightsaber core as he tucked it into his pocket, and any doubts that he might have had regarding its authenticity were laid to rest. This was the Heart of the Guardian; the cyan crystal, its sister, was the Mantle of the Force.

 

The chamber's foundations gave an almighty groan, floors and walls and ceilings shivering. Dust and pebbles rained down from the pillars. "They rigged the _statue,"_ Rey breathed, and damned if she didn't sound impressed before returning to the task at hand.

 

"How much longer?" Kylo asked as he scanned the room for an egress point. They couldn't go back the way they came— he could hear the sound of distant crashing, drawing nearer. The temple's collapse had started from the main doors and was steadily working its way inwards.

 

"I've almost got it," Rey gritted out, nimble fingers wedging the file between crystal and stone, her other hand using the Force to extract the Mantle as it gradually came loose. "Just a little more— _will you quit fidgeting?"_

 

"Shall we switch? So you can try standing perfectly still on a fault line?"

 

She squeezed her legs around his neck in warning. It was a fit of childish pique, pure and simple, that made him pinch her thigh. Yes, this was _definitely_ not how he had imagined it.

 

Finally she hissed in triumph, handing him the cyan crystal and then shimmying down his back in little hip-wiggling motions that had him clenching his jaw despite the fact that a temple was about to fall over their heads. Two pairs of eyes were better than one and it wasn't long before they spotted the discreet side door behind the statue, hurtling through it just as the sanctum's main threshold burst into smithereens.

 

*

 

It happened once they had clambered outside, into the red-gold light of an ending day. The earth rocked with a dozen tremors as the temple's proud spires seesawed and sunk, as the walls came shattering down. He tackled her out of the way of a falling pillar, which landed on the hard ground the same time they did, barely half a foot away.

 

"I assumed that a _Jedi_ would have better reflexes," he panted. His face was only centimeters from hers, her body so slight and wiry beneath him. He could see the sunset reflected in her wide hazel eyes.

 

She growled low in her throat and, before he knew it, he was flat on his back and she was straddling his hips and pinning him down by the shoulders. They were both high on the adrenaline of a near-death experience, drunk with the victory of acquiring what they had come for. The bond was a wild thing, circling them in tense expectation, now, now, _now—_

 

Kylo's mind went blank when Rey lowered her mouth to his. It was angry and heated, her lips chapped and her teeth sharp, her hands leaving his shoulders to cradle his face. After a while she attempted to pull away— no doubt alarmed by his initial lack of response— but he was having none of it, he sat up and wound his fingers through her hair and returned her kiss with a war's worth of longing, with all the ferocity of everything left unsaid since Starkiller Base. She tasted like caf and sunlight, like the dust of the ruins and the salt of sweat. He couldn't get enough, and so he kissed her until they were both breathless, until she was squirming in his lap and his hands transferred to her hips to help her grind down against him.

 

"I—" she gasped into his mouth, a myriad emotions contained in that soft, lone syllable and mirrored in the bond. She was relieved that she hadn't been imagining things. Furious that, of all the people in the galaxy, it had to be _him._ Afraid because the war was far from won and there was no telling what the future held.

 

"I know," was all he said— more like mumbled, really, eyes closed and half-mad with want. _I know, I know, I feel it, too._

 

iii.

 

Coded on a secondhand datapad in a run-down motel room in Mos Eisley, deleted and never sent:

 

_Before you, I was indifferent to the act of kissing. That seems like such a strange thing to admit now but it's true. I viewed it as a means to an end; at times, even wholly unnecessary when the mouth could be put to much better use in expediting release. And then you came along and—_

 

_And you were so in love with it. No matter the circumstances— even when we'd kiss in the middle of an argument just to shut each other up— there would invariably come a point when you smiled against my lips like you couldn't believe that something so simple could feel so good. And I suppose that made me love it, too— made me feel like I could kiss you for hours. It is unfortunate that we never had hours at a time. There was always a mission right around the corner, or a battle or a meeting or the possibility of getting caught. Everything about us was a whirlwind. But that moment when you'd smile into our kiss— that for me was the eye of each storm._

 

*

 

Written on a scrap of durasheet in a Tion Cluster outpost, the words fading after a while into air and ghosts:

 

_You shouldn't have forgiven me for any of it._

 

iv.

 

Their first time happened because he was jealous. She was twenty-two years old by then and he already knew what it was like to come in her mouth and how her fingers would twist into his hair when she fell apart on his tongue. She was undercover at a First Order party on Bastion, sweet-talking lecherous generals in an attempt to extract the coordinates of a Star Destroyer fleet that had suddenly gone dark, while he brooded in the cockpit of a stolen Imperial shuttle and kept tabs on her via the holobug in her left earring. She had cleaned up surprisingly well and was playing her role with aplomb; the men were putty in her manicured hands, their eyes glistening with lust every time she leaned in close. Only the fact that she was methodically ticking off flirting tips in her head while trying to reel in her disgust made Kylo stay where he was instead of storming the ballroom and dragging her back to the ship.

 

_You know, I think I'm getting pretty good at this,_ Rey mused into the bond as she "allowed" one of the Moffs to lead her to a secluded alcove, away from the crowds and the music.

 

_Focus,_ Kylo snapped.

 

_What the hell is your problem?_ She wasn't asking to be coy; he knew that much, at least. She was genuinely baffled by the concept of jealousy in a relationship, even one as furtive and as bizarre as theirs.

 

Although most of Palpatine's old guard were in their sixties by now, the particular Moff that she'd targeted had kept his looks. He was tall and lean, with aristocratic features and piercing gray eyes that looked at Rey as if she were a shiny new plaything he would love to break. Kylo's fists clenched at the realization that she was not as inwardly revolted as she _should_ have been and, as he watched the man brush his lips across the shell of her ear, the grainy images relayed by the holobug were momentarily dimmed by the rage that flared within him, vicious and scarlet like blood.

 

*

 

After snatching the coordinates from the Moff's mind, wiping his memory, and slipping away from the ball, Rey teetered into the shuttle on the strappy gold heels that she'd practiced walking in for hours. She was dressed in a silk evening gown that left little to the imagination, colored a rich, deep violet that was almost black. The scant V-neck bodice left her toned arms bare and exposed her prominent collarbones and the alluring valley between her breasts; its side cut-outs were covered in the same sheer gossamer mesh comprising the gown's overskirt, dusted with intricate star patterns woven in gold thread. The overall effect was bewitching and ethereal— and softened when she wrinkled her nose at him, a painfully innocent gesture to convey her awkwardness in such attire.

 

Kylo pounced as soon as the doors hissed shut, cupping her face in his hands and slanting his mouth over hers to swallow the greeting that had been about to emerge from her parted lips. She blinked even as her arms wound around his neck, like instinct, like muscle memory, breaking the kiss only once he had pressed her up against the wall.

 

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice ragged at the edges but still mystified. "We have to get off this planet—"

 

"Shocking that you should be in such a hurry to leave." His fingers grazed the curve of her breast through his leather glove and her silk gown as he mouthed at the spot where her ear met her jawline. "Considering that you seemed to be enjoying yourself earlier."

 

She searched the bond for what he meant, and the thing about Rey was that she had a temper to rival his. Perhaps she had even learned it from him. "Well, you know me and older men—" she started to say, barbed and flippant and hurt, and Kylo's heart sort of _broke_ right then and there.

 

He kissed her again, the monster roaring in his chest as his hand disappeared beneath the constellations of her gauzy skirts. It was almost grudging, the way she hooked one leg around his waist to give him better access, the way her hips bucked into the curl of his fingers. He wished he'd had the foresight to remove his gloves so he could feel how wet she was but previous experience had taught him that she got off on the rough texture of the leather, anyway, and, yes, it wasn't long before she was shaking, muffling her cries into his shoulder as he sucked bruises into the elegant slope of her neck. He wanted to mark her up, wanted to let the galaxy know that she was his even if it was only during these fleeting, stolen moments that were all he dared to ask for, and he didn't stop until she started blindly grasping at the fastenings of his pants.

 

He couldn't resist drawing back to sneer at her, one hand palming her breast, the other hiking her skirts further up her raised thigh. "Eager, are we, _cyar'ika?"_ His own voice sounded foreign to his ears, twisted and ugly as it was, distorted not by a modulator this time but by sickening possessiveness. "Or perhaps you're thinking of that old soldier you left at the ball?"

 

"You're such an asshole, Ben," she spat out, and whatever acerbic retort he came up with died on his tongue the moment she wrapped her slim fingers around his hard length.

 

There was no room for logic or for second thoughts, not when the need was this primal and the anger could not be dulled by anything else. When he finally drove into her, it was rough and resentful, it was suicide so deep in enemy territory, it was torn clothes and filthy words and his teeth to her throat and her nails in his scalp and the wall behind her rattling with his thrusts. The bond surged over them, an inferno of a million electric sparks, Light and Dark energies tangling together until the result was something like chiaroscuro, something like eclipse.

 

*

 

They slumped to the floor with him still inside her and her face buried in the crook of his neck as she panted through the aftershocks of her second orgasm. He rubbed soothing circles on her back, his sanity returning and with it the cold, exhausted epiphany that he had made a mistake— that the precedent had been set for the rest of their time together. He could taste it in the bond, her dashed hopes for something gentler and sweeter that she could have held up to the war's violence and the never-ending parade of deaths. It blossomed on his tongue like bile.

 

v.

 

Broadcasted from a defunct Imperial-era radio tower on the outskirts of the Fondor ecumenopolis, over a frequency so weak and scrambled that it was audible only as bursts of discordant static:

 

_You asked me once why I left the First Order. You could have taken it from my mind but I think that you wanted to hear me say it, because there are some things that need to be said out loud. I never gave you a straight answer, did I? I am sorry for that. And for so much else._

 

_The truth is that there is no answer— or, if there had been, I lost it somewhere between flying that shuttle out of Snoke's fortress and looking into your eyes. I want to believe that I did it for you, or for my mother, or for Han Solo's memory. I want to console myself with the fiction of selflessness— that I am capable of being a good person even though the Light is not my path._

 

_But we both know that I am not a good person, and that I am selfish. I think I did it to ease my conscience. To annoy Hux. To exact revenge on Snoke for all his false promises that left me with nothing but civil war and a dead father. I might even have done it because the Dark Side craves power most of all and you and I were unstoppable. Do you remember how they trembled before us,_ cyar'ika, _when we carried the Heart of the Guardian and the Mantle of the Force into battle? Do you remember all the worlds we laid to waste? There could have been no one else for me but you, warrior and nemesis and lover and redemption and mirror. I wonder if you ever truly understood that. I wonder if, given more time, I would have been able to make you understand—_

 

_I seem to have strayed from the original topic. This is the part where you tell me I talk too much._

 

_To begin again: Why did I leave the First Order? You might as well ask why I joined them at all, because my answer is the same— I used to think I knew but now I'm not so sure._

 

vi.

 

She was twenty-three years old when the war ended; a month before that, he was sneaking surreptitious glances at her from across the mess hall at the Resistance base as she ate with her friends and he with what remained of his family— it was not as if anyone _else_ would be willing to share a table with him.

 

Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa were content to dine in silence, although Kylo occasionally caught a flickering in the currents of the Force that could only mean they were exchanging thoughts. In stark contrast, Rey's part of the hall cracked with laughter as she joked around with Finn, Poe Dameron, Jessika Pava, and the rest of Black Squadron. Amidst the sea of other people's energy that for Kylo Ren would always take on the appearance of a jeweled, shifting prism, she glowed like a tiny sun. It was never like that when it was just the two of them— indeed, her aura had been burning red earlier, streaked through with black flames when she dragged him into a supply closet and went down on her knees.

 

_Stop thinking so loud,_ she admonished. Startled, he looked over at her again; she was lifting a cup of caf to her lips, her expression studiously demure even though her cheeks had gone pink.

 

_Stop listening,_ Kylo retorted as he picked at his food.

 

_I can hardly help it,_ she sniffed. _Anyway, I give you permission to return the favor later._

 

"Ben?" At the sound of Leia's voice, Rey's Force presence retreated like some skittish forest creature darting back into the undergrowth. "Is that—"

 

"— An actual smile?" Luke finished for his twin, blue eyes wide.

 

Kylo ducked his head. "It's nothing."

 

He felt them exchange glances across the table. There was a wealth of love there, love that he had no right to. And then his mother reached out to rub between his shoulder-blades the way she'd used to do when he was a child, and how could he have missed it, that this was the same gesture he'd bestow on Rey from time to time, that this was affection as he understood it, that he'd been taking his cues from Leia all along—

 

"He looks like Han when he smiles, doesn't he?" Leia asked Luke.

 

"He does," his uncle confirmed after a short pause.

 

And Kylo did nothing but stare down at his food, disconcerted as usual by forgiveness, sickened by how much he wanted to crawl towards it. No. Not for him, never for him.

 

*

 

The night before the siege on Snoke's fortress, he and Rey fucked in her rooms like they couldn't get enough of each other, like it would be the last time. She rode him until they were both boneless, until her teeth had left a trail of bruises along his throat and collarbones to match the ones that his fingers had dug into her hips. When she started to unravel around him, she abruptly bent at the waist so she could rest her forehead against his, eyes closed. Tears leaked from the corners of her lashes, dripping down onto his cheeks. _I don't want to die, I don't want to die._

 

He enfolded her in his arms, changed the angle of his hips to thrust up into her. His own eyes were suspiciously wet as he pressed kisses to the side of her face, and she was kissing him back, too— nose, ear, scar, whatever her mouth could reach, and how tragic was that, that the softest kisses they'd ever shared with each other had to be here at the end of all things—

 

"I don't want to die," she repeated, the words a broken rasp against his jaw. Some things needed to be said out loud.

 

He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, wishing he could have done that more often. "There is no death, there is the Force."

 

*

 

The Resistance won, against all odds, and he watched through the fading smoke across a field of corpses and dismantled battle droids and wreckage as her friends flocked to her side, everyone linking arms and grinning as hope finally paid off. He did not attempt to draw near and she didn't look for him and, a few days later, he walked into his trial with something like relief. At last it would be over. Whether it was imprisonment or execution— or sarlacc pit, as he overheard one soldier quip darkly— he was ready.

 

They pardoned him instead.

 

vii.

 

Scraped into the bark of an oak tree on the Argazdan homeworld:

 

_You won't believe the dreams I have about you._

 

viii.

 

_"Never have I been to a place so alive with the Force, yet so dead to it,"_ Visas Marr had said of Nar Shaddaa in an ancient holo. _"The contrast is like a blade."_ Kylo thinks that the Old Republic Sith-turned-Jedi Sentinel may have been on to something as he makes his way through the congested, filth-ridden city sprawl of the Smugglers' Moon, thousands upon thousands of souls moving around in his mind yet most of them as dull as tarnished brass. Here the grime clings to everywhere, including people's eyes. It seems as good a place as any to disappear.

 

He hightailed it out of the Core ten months ago and, while he doubts anyone would bother searching for him in the criminal underworld's noxious heart, he pulls the black hood lower over his face just to be safe. Eventually he finds a seedy little pub with several repulsorlift garbage scows buzzing about the entrance like flies circling a gaping mouth, and he slips inside for a quick meal and any leads to whoever was hiring and wouldn't ask too many questions.

 

The interior is dimly-lit, hazy with the smoke of various illicit substances. Kylo found himself a seat at the counter and—

 

And no matter what system you're in, a bar fight will always follow the same basic anatomy. He'd witnessed his fair share back when his father was making him tag along on smuggling runs and sending his mother into conniptions. Pack a bunch of lowlifes into one small room, pour liquor down their throats, and sit back and watch the fireworks. All it takes is looking at somebody the wrong way or, in this case, accidentally jostling their elbow and making them spill a bit of their Tatooine Sunburn.

 

"Excuse me," Kylo says stiffly but the reed-thin reptilian Frenk is having none of it, and he brought friends.

 

_"Don't tuck your thumb into your fist, surefire way to fracture it,"_ Kylo can almost hear his father grunt as bottles start flying and the pub devolves into chaos. _"You gotta be_ ingenious, _kid. Go for the jaw, trip 'em up, use your environment. Hell, hit 'em with a chair."_

 

He doesn't _actually_ need to do any of these. A simple mind trick would defuse the situation; failing that, the sight of an activated lightsaber in any day and age would send most men scampering. But the Mantle of the Guardian imbues the blade with a very distinctive cyan hue and he doesn't want even the slightest hint of his whereabouts reaching Leia's extensive spy network. Besides, there is a certain _satisfaction_ in the physicality of it, in the crack of bone and the sharp pain and the rage.

 

Unfortunately, one of his opponents has a stun blaster, and the denizens of Nar Shaddaa have no compunctions about shooting someone in the back— particularly while that someone is preoccupied with trying to break their friend's ribs.

 

*

 

When Kylo wakes up, he is in what appears to be a dilapidated old warehouse, surrounded by several humanoid figures lurking in the shadows. All his attention, however, soon narrows down to the massive pile of rubbery flesh towering over him, smoking a pipe.

 

"I think the outworlder's come to, _kajidii,"_ one of the humanoids mumbles in a language that takes Kylo a few seconds to parse.

 

A glow-lamp is thrust at his face. He squints in the sudden glare and a pair of huge orange eyes set in an amphibious gray-green visage blinks back at him. _"I've got a bad feeling about this,"_ Han Solo might have said.

 

"My boys know better than to bother me with random scum," the slug-shaped silhouette intones in a damp, gurgling voice. "But scum carrying _this—"_ And here he extends one pudgy hand to show the lightsaber conspicuously absent from Kylo's utility belt— "now that's a different story. I haven't seen one of these since the Clone Wars. Of course, I was only a little Huttlet then..."

 

Kylo says nothing. He's furtively scanning for any identifying marks or sigils that would give some clue as to which of the five families he's dealing with, as well as fiddling with the chains that bind his wrists together behind his back.

 

"The Jedi saved my life once," muses the crime lord. "I owe them. But how can I forget that it was also a Jedi who brought about the circumstances of my sire's death—"

 

It clicks into place. Kylo relaxes, all of his tension draining away into something that feels like acceptance. He stops fighting. This is destiny. It has to be.

 

"Do you see the quandary I am in, outworlder?" persists Rotta the Hutt, whom rumor has it is more urbane than Jabba but ten times as ruthless. " _Are_ you a Jedi, hmm? Or did you somehow get the drop on one?"

 

"Neither," Kylo replies. His mouth is twisted in a caricature of the smile that Leia had said reminded her of someone else. "My birth name is Ben Organa-Solo."

 

*

 

It would be more lucrative to ransom him to his mother but Kylo had counted on Huttese vengeance. An eye for an eye, a life for a life. They force him to his knees, aiming a blaster at his forehead. Obviously _this_ one is not set to stun.

 

"Is this wise, _lorda?"_ hisses an adviser. "The First Order is gone, the Republic Senate is in pieces. Organa has control over the last grand navy in the galaxy."

 

Rotta chuckles. "She would not go to war with the Cartel. Not for the sake of Kylo Ren. Her people would mutiny. Kill him."

 

The blaster barrel digs into the space between Kylo's eyes. He doesn't so much as flinch while he waits for the pull of the trigger, seized by a strange, fierce joy because _at last, at last, he is finally going to be punished—_

 

A loud crash reverberates throughout the warehouse as the doors are blown open, ripped from their hinges by the Force. All eyes jerk to the entrance. A steady, humming blaze of yellow plasma burning around a bronze core lights up the darkness.

 

For the first time in ten long months, the bond roars to life.

 

*

 

He watches her in awe as he always has, as he probably always will. She shifts between defensive and offensive forms with the effortlessness of breathing, blaster bolts ricocheting off her blade, men telekinetically sent flying into the walls or knocked unconscious or robbed of breath by the slicing motions of her off-hand through the air. _I taught her that,_ he thinks with a hint of pride as one of the thugs is _pulled_ towards her to meet the wide arc of her lightsaber beam.

 

Leaving a trail of limp bodies in her wake, Rey stalks over to Rotta and his cowering advisors, summoning Kylo's lightsaber into her palm. "I'm not going to kill you, _kajidii,"_ she tells Rotta in perfect Huttese, calm and strong and placing herself in front of Kylo like she's the only thing standing between him and the rest of the underworld. "But that is my mark on this one's face, and you know what that means on the moons of Nal Hutta. He's _mine."_

 

*

 

Rotta doesn't try to stop them from leaving. Perhaps some sons learn from their fathers' mistakes, after all.

 

ix.

 

It's tense and awful when Kylo and Rey leave the warehouse, walking out into the fetid stink and neon lights. He contemplates making a run for it but she proved herself the faster one long ago and, besides, she still has his lightsaber, her knuckles clenched to white around the hilt, weighing it in her palm with a slight frown as if she's contemplating chucking it at his head. He knows better than to test her when she's this furious and so, in obedience to an unspoken command, he follows her through the Vertical City's chaotic, crowded streets, absentmindedly rubbing his chafed wrists.

 

She leads him past the black market shops, the taverns, the gaudy high-rise casinos, and the spice dens, until at last they reach a modest inn where she flashes her key at the bouncers, who step aside to let them take the stairs up to her room. As the last one to enter, he automatically bolts the door while she places their weapons on the table, and then suddenly she's hurtling into his arms, burying her face in his chest as she clutches at his shirtfront with fingers twisting so tightly into the fabric that it's a miracle the seams don't rip. He thinks she must be crying— that's definitely a sniffle he hears just now— but he's afraid to do anything more than keep his hands loosely clasped around her small waist as the minutes tick by, slow and endless.

 

When she untangles herself from him to step back and look up at his face, it's with virulent, tear-stained hazel eyes. "Why did you leave?" she shouts, her voice scraped bitter and raw. "You just— in the middle of the night— you shut off the bond and I woke up and you were— you were _gone—"_ She's babbling now, near hysterical, the air thick with memories of the family that abandoned her on Jakku. He wants so desperately to reach for her again, regret hitting him like a ton of bricks, but it's self-revulsion that roots him to the spot.

 

"How did you find me?" he asks.

 

Her gaze flickers to the two lightsabers on the table. "They're sister crystals. They're connected. It's like a homing beacon," she explains. "All I have to do is hold the Heart and concentrate and it points the way to the Mantle. I've been on your trail for five months."

 

It's completely illogical but his own temper spikes, running counterpoint to hers. "Why would you throw your life away like that?"

 

She hits him. He can't say he wasn't expecting it but it still throws him for a loop, even though it's nothing more than a half-hearted slap to his upper arm. It stuns him into silence.

 

"Now that I've crashed your pity party," she snarls, "let me just make a few things _clear._ I'll admit that your official pardon came as a shock. I'm pretty sure the General called in every last favor everyone ever owed her in order to make it happen. However, we _did_ win the war because you defected, because you helped me kill the Knights of Ren and Snoke. That counts for something, yes?"

 

Kylo shrugs. Rey's fists clench at her sides. "You don't want to forgive yourself, that's fine," she continues sharply. "But your mother has already been through enough and you owe it to her to come back. You owe it to Luke and to everyone whose lives were turned upside down by the First Order. You have to come back and you have to help us rebuild. Whatever deliverance you seek, you won't find it here in the Outer Rim."

 

"I don't _know_ what I seek," he spits out, frustrated beyond measure. He doesn't want to be having this conversation in this shabby motel room with its garish wallpaper and the lights from a nearby casino falling across Rey's upturned face in nets of purple and green. "I only know that _this—_ the fact that I'm _here,_ free and unscathed— isn't fair to— to everyone. To those who died. I deserve something harsher—"

 

"Don't you _get_ it yet?" And, yes, they're both yelling now, someone in the next room is thumping the paper-thin wall but they don't care, they can't stop. This is a confrontation that is months— perhaps even years— in the making. The Force lashes out from them both, the floor _shivering_ with wrath and heartbreak. "It's not about you, Ben! It's no longer about what you _deserve._ The war is over, it's done, it's finished, and it's time to stop punishing those who love you. Including—" Here she falters, her glare still fixed on him but her lips frozen still.

 

He stares back, dumbfounded. "You never— you didn't say—"

 

"I'm here, aren't I?" She's so fierce like this, her chin set at a stubborn tilt and her expression positively mutinous. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't..." She trails off, her hands fluttering in front of her in a helpless gesture. She turns away from him, walking over to the windows and wrapping her arms around herself, looking defiant and yet terribly small.

 

The things he has done to hurt this girl. The things he will doubtless continue to do.

 

*

 

There is a message somewhere out there in Wild Space, being transmitted in an endless loop from a deserted space station to a dying star. It says, _You're everywhere._ It says, _I miss you._ It says, _I miss who I was when I was with you._ And it says, _Sometimes I just want to see you again, give you one last fight or drag you with me into the starlines, see what parts of us will survive to come out on the other side._

 

Soon the star will collapse in on itself, mass and energy coalescing into a vacuum from which nothing can escape— not even light, not even sound. Soon the message will be sucked into the heart of the void and there it will stay as a melody that no one can or will ever hear, burning forever or until the end of all things.

 

*

 

"Rey," Kylo says in the room on Nar Shaddaa.

 

She doesn't turn around but he can see vague bits and pieces of her reflection in the windowpane, that beautiful, amazing face superimposed over the city skyline. Her eyes meet his in the glass.

 

He moves forward, taking the first step of many to close the distance between them.

 

x.

 

Two weeks later, a communique races across the HoloNet on a frequency known only to a select few. It's from the _Millennium Falcon_ and it bears four words: _General, we're coming home._

**Author's Note:**

> [Aurebesh](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aurebesh/Legends).
> 
> [Wistril](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wistril_system).
> 
> [Vorzyd](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vorzyd_system).
> 
> [Munto Codru](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Munto_Codru).
> 
> [Typhojem](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Typhojem).
> 
> [R'iia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/R%27iia).
> 
> [The Mandalore](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mandalore_%28title%29).
> 
> The [Battle](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Thule) of [Thule](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Thule).
> 
> [Esstran sector](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Esstran_sector).
> 
> [Sith undead](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sith_undead).
> 
> [Marka Ragnos](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Marka_Ragnos).
> 
> [The Heart of the Guardian](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Heart_of_the_Guardian).
> 
> [The Mantle of the Force](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mantle_of_the_force).
> 
> [Tion Cluster](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tion_Cluster).
> 
> [Durasheet](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Durasheet).
> 
> [Bastion](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bastion).
> 
> [Holobug](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Holobug).
> 
> [Moff](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Moff/Legends).
> 
> [Fondor](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fondor/Legends).
> 
> [Argazda](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Argazda).
> 
> [Nar Shaddaa](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nar_Shaddaa/Legends).
> 
> [Visas Marr](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Visas_Marr).
> 
> [Tatooine Sunburn](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tatooine_Sunburn).
> 
> I am assuming that after Jabba's death, his son [Rotta](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rotta/Legends) inherited the title of [kajidii](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kajidii) of the clan.
> 
> [Wild Space](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wild_Space/Legends).


End file.
